The proposed sbir project is designed to develop an assay which will allow the direct measurement of a common carcinogen bound to dna (dna-adduct) and establish the correlation between the burden of this adduct and the industrial exposure to the carcinogen. the project will be performed in three… More

A three phase project is proposed to commercialize formulations of phospholipid vesicles capable of delivering immunogenic substances to specific lymphoid cells. phase i is a proof of concept study designed to demonstrate that a vesicle formulation known to aggressively target to macrophage in vitro… More

Recombinant dna technology has proven to be a powerul tool of research with potential to revolutionize agricultural andmedical practices. the technology, which involves isolatinga gene sequence of interest from one organism and manipulating the sequence in a vector into another organism,does not… More

Phospholipid vesicles have often been acclaimed for their potential as anticancer drug delivery agents. however, there is little experimental evidence which confirms that liposomes actually target chemotherapy to solid tumors. the overall goals of this sbir project are: 1) to verify that small… More

The site specific delivery of drugs to in vivo sites can increase the therapeutic effectiveness of drugs while reducing non-specific toxic effects. the use of thermolabile vesicles for the delivery of drugs to specific sites is a potentially potent method for improving the specificity of drug… More

Proton nmr imaging is rapidly becoming a major diagnostic tool in health care. the technique offers high resolution images without the use of ionizing radiation. diagnostic capability can be enhanced with contrast agents, such as paramagnetic ions, provided they are site-directed and show low… More

Many immunostimulatory agents are available which are potential macrophage activating agents. however, their in vivo ability to induce antitumor activity in macrophage is severely limited due to the rapid clearance of these agents. this project proposes to use phospholipid vesicles (liposomes) as a… More

Vestar research inc. proposes to develop phospholipid vesicle formulations (liposomes) for incorporation of poorly soluble and/or unstable anticancer drugs into aqueous media acceptable for intravenous use. this methodology will enable us to prepare aqueous suspensions of antitumor agents at… More

Acute myocardial infarction accounts for approximately 700,000 hospitalizations annually. one therapeutic approachto this problem is the application of thrombolytic agents, such as streptokinase, to produce reperfusion of the ischemic myocardial tissue. unfortunately, recent experi- mental evidence… More

Neutron capture therapy is an attractive alternative to standard radiation techniques for cancer treatment if nuclei, such as (10)b, can be selectively concentrated in tumors. small, unilamellar, phospholipid vesicles are known to be taken up by animal and human tumors. liposome formulations will be… More

This project will develop monoclonal antibody-targeted liposomes for the purpose of delivering chemotherapeutic agents. monoclonal antibody raised against a tumor-specificsurface antigen will be covalently coupled to the liposome surface. the linking chemistry to be used has been developed to suit… More

Vestar proposes to develop the methods necessary to lyophilize liposome encapsulated hemoglobin (ieh) . the methods and equipment utilized will be commensurate with large-scale lyophilization practices common to the pharmaceutical industry in full accordance with good manufacturing practice (gmp)… More

Vestar has developed a liposomal drug delivery system comprised of (mtx) encapsulated in the internal aqueous space of small unilamellar vesicles and human recombinant il-2 covalently coupled to the exterior surface. the complex is called suv-mtx-il-2 (smi). it is designed to target to the high… More

Conjugated gold compounds such as aurothiomalate, are administered in progressive rheumatoid arthritis. at present, only these antiarthritics arrest the progression of the disease. treatment is limited because severe organ toxicities occur in 33% of patients taking parenteral or oral gold compounds.… More

Genes for selectively modified tumor necrosis factor (SM-TNF) will be used to produce sufficient quantities of the proteins for testing. To accomplish this goal, the genes for TNF-alpha and TNF-beta will be altered as desired by use of site - directed mutagenesis. Desired traits are those predicted… More

Preliminary findings indicate that liposomal tumor necrosis factor (TNF) has potential application as an anti-tumor therapy. In initial studies, it retains cytotoxic activity against cancer cells in culture and yet elicits none of the toxic effects associated with TNF in healthy mice. These studies… More